Sh!t Bad Historians Say: On the Perversion of Language

Real talk from a real Texas historian.

“Doesn’t emphasizing the personhood of people held as slaves allow us to escape the legacy of slavery, and free historians to better describe the past?”

Not long ago, it was easier to write a paragraph or engage in conversation. Words evoked specific meanings that, from continued usage, we all accepted. In fact, that’s the very purpose of language. Through shared language, it was possible to maintain a national discourse. Then, toward the end of the last century, something happened. SWAT teams of the Sensitivity Police proclaimed that they had rejected the meaning of certain expressions.

Take “slave,” for example. Time was, we all knew what that word meant and used it without blink or stammer. Indeed, it was a compliment to describe a man of attainment as the “grandson of slaves.” It signified that he had gained success having overcome great societal obstacles. We admired him for it. Then, “slave” became taboo, at least in the academy.

The stormtroopers of language perversion decreed that, henceforth, the socially sanctioned term would be “enslaved person.”

Why?

Good question. To explain, I will quote a few of my academic colleagues. As one posted on a humanities and social sciences message board, “Slave is reductive and static and does not accurately reflect reality. Enslaved individuals are . . . complex human beings.”

Follow me here: they argue that the “non-human” noun deprives the slaves in question of their humanity and replicates the violence of the “peculiar institution” in a linguistic mode. To turn the old school yard rejoinder on its head, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are verbal violence.”

The National Park Service provides an admirably comprehensive explanation, in a glossary on their website about the Underground Railroad:

Enslaved Person

This term is used in place of slave. It more accurately describes someone who was forced to perform labor or services against their will under threat of physical mistreatment, separation from family or loved ones, or death. For the general purposes of this website, the term refers to one of the tens of millions of kidnapped Africans transported to the Americans and their descendants held in bondage through the American Civil War.

One social justice linguist inquired rhetorically, “Doesn’t emphasizing the personhood of people held as slaves allow us to escape the legacy of slavery, and free historians to better describe the past?” Look, I know that those who ask rhetorical questions don’t expect (or even want) answers to their questions, but humor me for a moment.

During the course of my career, I have read hundreds of WPA slave narratives. I don’t recall a single interviewee who didn’t self-identify as a “slave.” They bitterly resented that they had been slaves, but not the term “slave” itself. Given the horrors of their experiences, that was the least of their concerns. Like the rest of us, they knew what the word meant and believed that it accurately reflected their reality. I guess they just didn’t know better. How unfortunate that they did not have squads of effete university professors—high priests, if you will—to explain it to them. 

Writer and editor Andi Cumbo-Floyd contributed her unique perspective on the issue. “I love to read narratives,” Ms. Cumbo-Floyd posted in her online biography, “stories that tell us more about other people and ourselves. My favorite genres are magical realism, mysteries, and essays, but I read widely and as much as I can.”

Look, I’m supposed to be a smart guy; I write books and have funny letters behind my name, but I had no idea what “magical realism” was. So I looked it up. If you don’t know (and I bet you don’t), listen up! Magic realism is “a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy.”

Live and learn.

But back to Andi Cumbo-Floyd and the enslaved persons. If we employ the approved idiom, she swoons,

“We carry them forward as people, not the property that they were in that time.”

“We carry them forward”? WE carry them forward?

How surreal! How fantastical! 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but all the bondsmen, slaves, or enslaved persons in question are dead. They are past caring what we call them.

Historians are not resurrectionists.

All they can do is peruse period documents and try to make sense of past lives and times. And when one reads the words of the slaves themselves, one comes to realize that, at no time, did they ever consider themselves “property.” The slave owners may have, but not the slaves themselves. They always knew they were “people”—and so did the rest of us.

But “slave” isn’t the only word or phrase on the chopping block. The Word Police have also proscribed “slave owner,” “master,” “mistress,” “master bedroom/bathroom,” “blacklist,” “whitelist,” “The Masters Tournament,” “cakewalk,” “blackball,” “black mark,” “black sheep,” “uppity,” “peanut gallery,” “off the plantation,” and “sold down the river.”

Agents of the Language Gestapo have helpfully provided acceptable alternatives to all this “verbal violence.” Instead of “master” or “slave master,” we are instructed to write enslaver. Instead of “plantation,” slave labor camp. Instead of “runaway slave” or “fugitive slave,” freedom seeker, self-emancipator, or self-liberator.

Individuals often escaped the plantation and became, in the parlance of the time, “fugitive slaves.” But, no more. According to the National Park Service:

Many labels for escaping African Americans were constructs of enslaving society or by paternalistic abolitionists. As such, terms discussing slavery and freedom from the period tend to reflect how the dominant society viewed African Americans and their efforts toward freedom. Instead, the National Park Service and its partners strive to use language that more accurately reflects both the inherent humanity of enslaved people and historical accuracy.

There is not universal consensus on what words are most appropriate to use when talking about slavery. In one example, some historians prefer to use words like “fugitive” to emphasize that when freedom seekers liberated themselves, they simultaneously broke state and/or federal laws. Others object to the criminal sound of the term, feeling that it unfairly maligns those seeking freedom through escape, or argue that it legitimizes the perspectives of the society that upheld the legality of slavery.

Still awake?  Isn’t it curious that so many of the individuals and institutions who profess to value the “inherent humanity of enslaved people” end up sounding like robots? Despite arguments that “woke-speak” better reflects the “reality” of slave life, it provides a fantasy version. Can you imagine the following exchange in 1835?

“Come, fellow enslaved persons, join me and these other self-liberators in our flight to Matamoros.”

Nah, me neither.

Another example of academic jargon is “agency.” For the uninitiated, when used in this context, it means “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.” See the video below, to hear Dr. Peniel Joseph, the Associate Dean for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the holder of the Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, explain the importance of slave “agency.”

Dr. Peniel Joseph, in TSHA 2022 Fellows Presentation panel, on the word “enslaved” and agency.

I’m sure that we’re all grateful for Professor Joseph’s deep insight into this unique culture. I must admit that I had no idea that enslaved people “had dreams like us” and “loved their kids just like we love our children.”

I mean, who knew? Only every sentient being on the planet.

I’m at a loss to explain his maniacal laughter. Perhaps he’s just in on the con.  

“Come on, Steve,” you may be thinking, “aren’t you going on rather long about all this? What’s the big deal, anyway? What’s wrong with people of good will trying to be more sensitive, being more protective of people’s feelings?”

Elizabeth Pryor, associate professor of history at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, is of that opinion. “Language works best when it brings as many people into communication with each other,” she declaims.

“If we know, by using certain language, we’re disinviting certain people from that conversation, language isn’t doing its job.”

Who could disagree with that?

Well, me for one. The cybernetic obfuscation of academic writing is specifically intended to disinvite certain people from the conversation. Those disinvited people are non-academics. Moreover, the current buzzwords do not bring people into communication with each other, they exclude them.

Worse still, the Woke-Worders, have a stranglehold on the academy. Students and junior faculty dare not abjure the prescribed shibboleths lest they find themselves blackballed. (Oops, sorry!) Academic presses will not publish books by authors who refuse to follow the prevailing politically correct directives; they dare not resist the tyranny either.

It’s not a conspiracy; it’s a consensus of tenured radicals and the professionally sensitive.

Yet, my greatest objection is that linguistic autocracy makes it harder to write and lowers the quality of our writing. It renders our syntax stilted, static, and impenetrable. Writers who care about style—and admittedly that’s not most academics—strive to avoid word repetition. I have nothing against “enslaved person,” per se. I will employ it occasionally along with “slave” and “bondsman.” It is simply another arrow in my writer’s quiver.

But the strict insistence on the usage of certain socially sanctioned words and phrases forces our writing into syntactic straightjackets. More to the point, it restricts our freedom to write what we want, how we want. And that’s the bitter irony. The same “experts” who prattle on about human dignity wish to shackle us in ideological lockstep.

Make no mistake, in the groves of academe, the use of woke-speak is not a suggestion; it is a command.

But doesn’t language restriction “free historians to better describe the past?” No, Einstein, quite the opposite. It does nothing but limit our stylistic options. It makes it harder to connect with non-academic readers, who remain blissfully unaware of woke-speak jargon. It locks us into a turgid, soulless, programmed template and robs us of our distinctive voices.

Since at least 1789, revolutionaries have employed language restriction as an instrument of social control. During the French Revolution, they went so far as to change the names of the days of the week and the months of the year. They also altered the calendar. Soviet officials followed suit. They did all this to promote a new revolutionary consciousness. Because it seems so silly, it is easy to dismiss woke-speak as just another academic fad. It isn’t; it is a calculated means of social control, designed to promote a progressive ideology.

If one can control the words people can or cannot employ, one can—quite literally—manipulate what they think.

Consider the inferences of the following sentences.

“Class, today we will visit an Old South plantation.”

“Class, today we will visit an Old South forced labor camp.” 

Hey, no loaded language there!

Does the second sentence permit the possibility of conflicting interpretations? Does it promote a nuanced discussion of plantation economies? No, of course not, and that’s the whole point.

In no way, is this education. It is indoctrination, plain and simple.

The activist promoters of woke-speak may not be serious people, but they are serious about advancing their fantasy agenda. They may be fruitcakes, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t pernicious.